A Diversity of ‘Nutcrackers’

Inspired by Tchaikovsky in New York and London

Adelaide Clauss and Duncan McIlwaine in American Ballet Theater’s “The Nutcracker.”Credit
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Institutions have been known to award a best “Nutcracker” prize. I wonder how on earth they make their choice. You have only to watch the “Nutcracker Suite” section of the 1940 Disney animated movie “Fantasia” to see how choreographic imagery in response to Tchaikovsky’s music can flourish while utterly unconnected to the story he was envisioning.

Most balletomanes are loyal to one local “Nutcracker.” But I am a Briton who first discovered “The Nutcracker” in London, and who now lives in New York. Where do my “Nutcracker” loyalties lie? Recently I watched “The Nutcracker” on both sides of the Atlantic, with three leading companies. Although the Royal Ballet’s “Nutcracker” is praised by many as an excellent version, and by some as the best, it made me homesick for America as nothing else did during a four-week visit to my native land.

The other two I saw were Alexei Ratmansky’s staging for American Ballet Theater (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) and the production to which New York City Ballet gives the wretched label “George Balanchine’s ‘The Nutcracker’ ” (at the David H. Koch Theater). These versions represent drastically different takes on what “The Nutcracker” is about.

They all, mind you, start out from a similar 19th-century narrative premise. Clara (or Marie) Stahlbaum’s godfather Dr. Drosselmeyer, a magician, arrives at her family’s Christmas party with dancing dolls and, for her, a Nutcracker. After the party, the Christmas tree, the Nutcracker and other objects change size. In a battle between mice and toy soldiers, Clara helps the Nutcracker to victory. In gratitude, he takes her to the lands of Snow and Sweets.

Photo

Taking some license: Robert La Fosse in the New York City Ballet’s “George Balanchine’s ‘The Nutcracker’” at Lincoln Center.Credit
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

The Royal staging is directed by Peter Wright and designed by Julia Trevelyan Oman. When new in 1984, it claimed to reconstruct parts of the 1892 original Mariinsky scenario and choreography. It soon emerged, however, that Mr. Wright included only as many bits of older choreography (some not from 1892 but originating with various mid-20th-century productions) as didn’t interfere with his concept, which is that “The Nutcracker” is chiefly about Drosselmeyer’s machinations to rescue his nephew from Nutcracker form. Finally in 1999, Mr. Wright overhauled his production considerably, distancing it further from the Mariinsky original. Both the 1984 and 1999 versions are on DVD; the latter one has also been broadcast to America and other countries in HD in recent years.

Balanchine’s version, new in 1954 and danced by several companies across America, is also based on the Mariinsky version; it, too, contains sections of the 1892 choreography (the Little Prince’s mime speech and the Candy Cane dance); it, too, has been filmed and broadcast several times, most recently in 2011. He and Mr. Wright both omit one number in Act II. (The Royal cuts the Mother Ginger item. Balanchine omits the tarantella solo for the Sugar Plum Fairy’s cavalier.)

Balanchine, however, takes greater license than that. He moves the Sugar Plum Fairy’s solo (with its celesta, an instrument imported to Russia by Tchaikovsky for the premiere) to an earlier point in Act II. And he adds to Act I an entr’acte from “The Sleeping Beauty.” The purist in me sometimes objects to any interpolation of non-“Nutcracker” material, though in truth it’s not so unusual. Several other successful American productions add items from other Tchaikovsky works or from other composers; and a surprising number change the order of the Act II divertissements.

But this additional scene in Balanchine’s version is in every way extraordinary. Paradoxically, it takes us to the beating heart of “The Nutcracker,” and, without any dancing, it may be the most tenderly affectionate scene in all his work. The child heroine, here called Marie, runs to retrieve her Nutcracker doll and falls asleep with it in her arms. She is found thus by first her anxious mother, who wraps her own shawl over her daughter like a blanket, and then by Drosselmeyer, who mysteriously prepares his Nutcracker and goddaughter for the magic that will follow.

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The Mouse King in Peter Wright’s version at the Royal Ballet.Credit
Johan Persson/ArenaPal

Do you want total fidelity to Tchaikovsky’s score? Of the more than 40 productions I’ve seen, I know only two that play all of it in the right order: Mark Morris’s “The Hard Nut” (last seen in New York in 2010) and Mr. Ratmansky’s. Still, even the 1892 version made small cuts. And both “The Hard Nut” and the Ratmansky version radically change the ballet’s narrative by turning it into a love story, making the magical music of the Sugar Plum pas de deux serve as an accompaniment to love’s transfiguring wonder. So what’s authentic in a “Nutcracker”?

The more you listen to Tchaikovsky’s score, the more capable of multiple interpretations it proves. No one version can unlock all its layers. Though I tend to resist the idea that “The Nutcracker” is a love story, Mr. Morris and Mr. Ratmansky make so imaginative a case for it that I usually succumb to the charm of their storytelling.

The Snowflake dances of Balanchine and Mr. Morris, quite unalike, are both marvels that demonstrate the reputations of these two men as the most musical of choreographers — and yet it’s Mr. Ratmansky who makes us rehear the wordless singing as the Snowflakes’ dangerous siren song. I hope someone broadcasts this production next year; this scene alone could be tremendous on screen, as could the character acting throughout.

By contrast, the Royal’s Snow scene, with Clara and the Nutcracker — played by adults — dancing alongside the Snowflakes, is insufferably twee. And it’s simply a mess to find these “children” joining in amid the Spanish, Chinese, Russians, Mirlitons and Flower dances. Worse, the Royal’s Drosselmeyer usurps the whole Sugar Plum realm. Lev Ivanov’s 1892 choreography of the Sugar Plum’s adagio and variation have real felicities — her sequence of gargouillades (excluded from every American “Nutcracker” I’ve seen) become a perfect visual image for the magical sound of the celesta — but her drama is irretrievably spoiled by the way she and her cavalier enter to dance their pas de deux at Drosselmeyer’s behest. They emerge from separate doors on cue, not like sovereigns but like clockwork dolls.

The ballet of “The Nutcracker” was designed as a Magical Mystery Tour. I love it when the delicacy of the Mirlitons (Marzipan or Shepherdesses or Nutcracker’s sister in various versions) is followed by the towering, vulgar Mother Ginger and the brood of dancing children who live under her crinoline. But no British or Russian production I’ve ever seen includes the Mother Ginger number. For them, the world of “The Nutcracker” must stay neatly, politely pretty. And no British or Russian classical-ballet version of “The Nutcracker” I’ve seen has been an important work of the imagination. Only in America does the cultural diversity of “The Nutcracker” find its natural home.

“The Nutcracker” is in the Royal Ballet repertory through Jan. 16 at Covent Garden in London; roh.org.uk. “The Nutcracker” is in the American Ballet Theater repertory through Sunday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene; abt.org. “George Balanchine’s ‘The Nutcracker’ ” is in New York City Ballet’s repertory through Jan. 4 at the David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center; nycballet.com.

A version of this article appears in print on December 19, 2013, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Diversity of ‘Nutcrackers’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe